Milky Way

Scientists have just calculated the weight of the Milky Way and it is truly phenomenal in its mass. After analyzing our galaxy, it was determined that the Milky Way shares the same weight as a whopping 1.5 trillion suns stacked up and stretched for a staggering 256,000 light years. According to The Daily Mail, the […]

Using the European Space Agency satellite Gaia, astronomers from the University of Vienna have mapped a new river of stars in the Milky Way that were found in the southern sky. These 4,000 stars first appeared as a cluster approximately one billion years ago, and have since formed four rivers that meander around the periphery […]

Thanks to a new study, scientists now have a revised estimate of when the Andromeda Galaxy will finally smash into the Milky Way, and things are looking much brighter for Earth than previously believed. According to Space, the spiral Andromeda Galaxy will still be crashing into the Milky Way, but research through Europe’s Gaia spacecraft […]

The year 2019 is going to be quite a remarkable year for astronomy, with the release of the first ever photograph captured of a black hole set soon, thanks to the dedicated work of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT.) We have, of course, never actually seen a black hole before, despite the many images that […]

A catastrophic collision hurtling towards the Milky Way galaxy may reach us sooner than astronomers first thought, NBC Philly is reporting. Scientists have predicted that the Andromeda galaxy will run into the Milky Way galaxy in 8 billion years — but that might not even matter now, as another collision will happen sooner. Scientists see […]

Scientists have suggested that for the first time, they may have finally captured what could end up being the first image of a black hole within the Milky Way. A team of international astronomers have been hard at work analyzing two specific areas of space located in Sagittarius A and M87 through the Event Horizon […]

For the second time, astronomers have detected fast radio bursts (FRBs) coming from the exact same region in space outside of the Milky Way, which makes this the first time that they have spotted more than one set of these ubiquitous radio waves in the same location. As ScienceAlert reports, even when these fast radio […]

Scientists have finally found proof that once dark matter has been heated up, it can move around — and that this occurs because of stars that are being forged within galaxies. In a new study, scientists successfully demonstrated how they have observed something known as “dark matter heating,” while also providing further details about the […]

According to a new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is on a crash course with our Milky Way that could destabilize our solar system and doom life on planet Earth, should any life be left by the time the event occurs. […]

Astronomers have just discovered the most distant object that has ever been detected within our solar system, and this object is a dwarf planet that has been given the affectionate nickname of Farout, with its official title being 2018 VG18. As Phys.org reports, the official announcement of this exciting new discovery was given by the […]

For the first time, astronomers have been able to accurately measure all of the starlight that has been produced since the creation of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. While the dawn of the universe began with nothing but blackness, after several hundred million years had elapsed it finally began giving us the luminous stars […]

While it may seem unbelievable, astronomers from the University of Sydney, working in collaboration with a group of international researchers, believe that they have spotted a completely new star system in the Milky Way that can produce a powerful gamma-ray burst, and this system is known as the Apep star system. According to Phys.org, the […]

Earlier this year, the Inquisitr reported on the discovery of a giant rogue planet floating just 20 light-years away from Earth. Unlike most planets, this particular celestial body doesn’t orbit a star and was found wandering alone through the cosmic darkness, detected by radio telescopy. Now, astronomers have announced that they have found two more […]

Astronomers have stumbled upon what they believe to be one of the most ancient stars in the entire universe. Dubbed 2MASS J18082002–5104378 B, the newfound star resides in a double star system located in our own galaxy — a mere 2,000 light-years from Earth, reports Astronomy magazine. At 13.5-billion-years-old, this star dates back to just […]

For a long time, scientists have suspected that the center of our galaxy is home to a supermassive black hole. Such objects exist at the heart of most major galaxies in the universe — and astronomers started to speculate that the Milky Way might be counted among them after a bright radio source was detected […]

For those who are in the Southern Hemisphere, there are two distant patches of milky clouds that can be seen in the night sky. These are both satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, known as the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud — and astronomers have determined that these galaxies have very recently […]

Astronomers believe that studying the moon may just be the key to learning more about how the early universe was formed with the first stars and galaxies. A group of astronomers who are headed up by Dr. Benjamin McKinley of the Curtin University’s ARC Center of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO […]

Astronomers have managed to locate the youngest pulsar in the Milky Way, NASA announced yesterday. Dubbed PSR J1846-0258, the pulsar was spotted inside one of our galaxy’s supernova remnants — found 19,000 light-years away from our planet, in the Aquila constellation (The Eagle). This exciting discovery — first detailed in a study published earlier this […]

A new study has revealed that 13 hypervelocity stars that have been discovered may be alien in nature, having traveled to the Milky Way from other galaxies. Hypervelocity stars, which are the most rapidly moving stars in our galaxy and travel at several hundreds of millions of miles per hour, are not gravitationally bound to […]

Earlier today, South Africa unveiled its new super radio telescope, a 64-dish instrument dubbed MeerKAT. Built by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), MeerKAT is stationed in the semi-arid Karoo region of the Northern Cape, and is part of a scientific mega-project which seeks to unravel the secrets of the universe, reports Reuters. According […]

Astronomers have discovered evidence of a cataclysmic collision that occurred 8 to 10 billion years ago between the Milky Way and a galaxy known as the Sausage Galaxy. This collision completely changed the Milky Way and helped to create its distinct outer halo along with its inner bulge. After hurtling into the Milky Way, the […]

Scientists have just discovered that the beautifully vivid microwave glow known as anomalous microwave emission (AME) that can be seen scattered throughout different regions of the Milky Way is actually caused by diamond dust or, more technically, crystalline carbon. Researchers have been aware for quite some time that this mysterious glow was caused by some […]

It won’t be another 15 years or so before the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) observatory is launched into outer space, but astronomers are already excited about the potential discoveries its launch could yield. A new study, in fact, suggests that LISA might be able to detect “dozens” of binaries, or pairs of gravitationally bound, […]

Astrophysicists have discovered a group of planets outside of the Milky Way for the first time, through the use of microlensing. The identified objects range from a mass of the moon to the mass of Jupiter. The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The discovery was led by scientists from the University of […]

Scientists have made a surprising discovery near the center of the Milky Way, as 11 baby stars were spotted right on the edge of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. This baby star nursery, as it’s called, is located a mere three light-years away from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, which is known by the […]

A black hole is perhaps the most fascinating object in existence. Astronomers suspect that black holes are closely tied to the structure and formation of galaxies. In fact, it’s thought that an enormous black hole exists at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, influencing its size and growth. It should be noted that […]

Of the 11 farthest stars yet detected, all of which are located far outside the boundaries of the spiral confines — relatively speaking — of the Milky Way galaxy, at least five seem to have not actually originated within the Milky Way itself. According to new research from Harvard astronomers, it would appear that the […]

It turns out that the universe, the inconceivably vast expanse of space we live in, is even bigger than we realized. According to a recent report from Space.com, the universe has at least 10 times more galaxies than previously thought. If you’re keeping track, that means there could be up to 2 trillion galaxies in […]

If a killer asteroid struck the Earth, humanity could be devastated, but a new groundbreaking three-dimensional map of the Milky Way galaxy could help astronomers spot incoming space rocks before they become a threat. The European Space Agency (ESA) just released the first star chart from Gaia, a space-based observatory that’s on a mission to […]

There’s a huge “X” made of stars marking the center of the Milky Way galaxy, just as if it were the spot on a galactic treasure map. The massive star structure had been predicted for years, but scientists were unable to prove its existence. Until now, that is. And all it took was a Twitter […]

Rejoice, UFO aficionados! A new study out of Cornell University says that space aliens from other planets in our galaxy do exist; the problem, however, is we probably won’t find them for another few centuries. Scientists used fancy math equations from the Fermi paradox and the mediocrity principle to research the amount of time it […]

Scientists just discovered hundreds of hidden galaxies behind the Milky Way, reported Fox News. The discovery was made possible thanks to a new telescope view taken using an Australian radio telescope installed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Parkes Observatory in Australia. Despite being 250 million light years away from the Milky […]

A giant 11,000 light-year long gas cloud that was hurled from the Milky Way 70 million years ago has changed course and is headed straight back to our galaxy on a collision course of galactic proportions. The gigantic Smith Cloud is set to collide with the Milky Way as it travels 700,000 MPH in a […]

A giant gas cloud is on a collision course with the Milky Way, traveling at a staggering speed of 700,000 miles per hour, according to The Huffington Post. But, don’t fret, it is not going to strike against our planet any time soon, with scientists speculating that it may take up to 30 million years […]

Is the Milky Way about to change from a nice, quiet galactic outback where intelligent life dreams of boldly going where no man has gone before to something a bit rougher? According to the astronomers at Hubble Telescope’s ground support, also known as The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, a hydrogen cloud is […]

The origins of our Milky Way galaxy are now much clearer. Using a revolutionary “growth-chart,” scientists led by Melissa Ness of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, discovered how our own Milky Way galaxy grew into what it is now. They accomplished this by charting the ages of 70,000 stars and used […]

Creating the largest astronomy image ever of the Milky Way was a five-year journey for the German astronomers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The end result was a 46 billion pixel photo which showed about 56,000 more bright objects than previously discovered before, and now the public has the ability to scan this image to look […]

Stephen Hawking famously discovered how black holes can emit radiation as opposed to simply gorging on matter and light sending everything inside the event horizon — the border where light can escape and where light cannot escape — to a singularity, that is, an infinitely small point at the center which condenses matter to phases […]

The Andromeda galaxy’s violent past has been revealed courtesy of a new study, and in the process it has basically been revealed that it’s just a plain old bully. Astronomers have revealed that over the last million or so years, the galaxy has been consuming and absorbing weaker galaxies and their content before then moving […]

Scientists studying data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope have confirmed that a recent X-ray flare detected from the center of our own Milky Way galaxy is the largest ever they have ever come across. In a press release issued by NASA, they have confirmed that the record-breaking X-ray flare definitely came from the super-massive black […]

According to a team of astronomers, Andromeda Galaxy will consume our Milky Way Galaxy approximately five billion years from now. According to RedOrbit, when galaxies grow too massive to continue making their own stars, they begin cannibalizing other nearby galaxies. Dr. Aaron Robotham, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia node of the […]

Looking for the perfect but economical honeymoon but not sure what’s possible on a shoestring budget? Interested in seeing the Milky Way in a natural setting? Want a holiday that makes you feel closer to nature? Think you need to get away from the city for a few days? You may not have to visit […]

The Milky Way, when viewed from a camera lens, often elicits a shiver of existential wonder from the soul. That’s part of what draws us to timelapse astrophotography, as previously reported in the Inquisitr. Timelapse astrophotography allows the naked eye to see what lays hidden beyond our world; we are a tiny part of the […]

It takes a lot of darkness to see the ghostly traces of the Milky Way hanging beyond our tiny world. It also takes a lot of patience, but the results often resemble something you might find on the cover of a sci-fi fantasy novel. It’s not fantasy; nor is it fiction. It’s astrophotography. It’s not […]

Wanna feel small? Turns out the Milky Way — home to you and everything you love — isn’t comparatively as massive as we thought it was. In fact, compared to one of our closest neighboring galaxies, Andromeda, we are positively bite-sized. The news comes by way of a new study published in the Monthly Notices […]

In an effort to test predictions for the formation of the Milky Way, Sky and Telescope tells us that Dr. John Bochanski and his team of astronomers have discovered the two most distant stars ever recorded in the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery by Dr. Bochanski and his team is important because data gathered about […]

A new study from the University of Sheffield, shows that a super massive black hole could end the Milky Way’s ability to form new stars. The discovery give us an idea of when the last stars will be created and when the galaxy will go into a state of decay. The full study can be […]

The middle months of summer usually mean more outdoor fun for most, and while you may be out enjoying the sunshine or the beach, there’s another spectacle that happens during the summer that’s worth staying up late for – observing the Milky Way. On July 3rd, Earth will be at aphelion, its farthest point from […]

Have you ever wanted to travel to the distant reaches of the Milky Way? All aboard the IXS Enterprise! The next destination is Alpha Centauri; only a cool 4.65 light years away! Your trip will include full meal service and the best part is, we’ll be traveling so fast that hyper-sleep won’t be needed. Obviously, […]

The Milky Way Galaxy contains around 100 million places that can support living organisms, according to a report featured in the journal Challenges. The report is the first quantitative estimate of life-harboring planets in our galaxy. The discovery might make you think that, somewhere in the Milky Way, there is a cantina where alien dregs […]